Age at Onset of Declarative Gestures and 24-Month Expressive Vocabulary Predict Later Language and Intellectual Abilities in Young Children With Williams Syndrome.

Angela M Becerra,Carolyn B Mervis

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02648

Abstract

Background: One of the most consistent findings in the early language acquisition literature regarding children in the general population is that the onset of declarative pointing gestures precedes the onset of expressive referential language. Furthermore, frequency of early use of declarative gestures is a stronger predictor of later lexical development than early vocabulary size. These findings suggest that early declarative gestures may play a critical facilitative role in later language development. To evaluate the universality of these findings, we tested children with Williams syndrome (WS), a genetic disorder associated with both language and communicative gesture delay.Method: Participants were 47 children with classic-length WS deletions. Age of onset of declarative show and point were determined by parental report on the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (CDI): Words and Gestures. Expressive vocabulary size at onset of these gestures, first referential expressive word, 24 months, and 48 months and grammatical complexity at 48 months were determined by parental report on the CDI: Words and Sentences. Receptive and expressive vocabulary and overall intellectual ability at 48 months were measured using standardized assessments.Results: In contrast to previous findings for children in the general population, most children with WS began to produce referential language several months before they produced declarative point. A series of multiple regressions indicated that both age at onset of declarative point and expressive vocabulary size at 24 months made significant independent contributions to individual differences in lexical, grammatical, and overall intellectual ability at 48 months. Similarly to the findings for typically developing children and children with other developmental disabilities, individual differences in the declarative gesture measure accounted for considerably more variance in 48-month lexical ability than early expressive vocabulary size.Discussion: The transition from prelinguistic communication to initial referential language does not depend on the onset of the ability to use declarative point. Nevertheless, the length of time that a child has been producing declarative point was a better predictor than early expressive vocabulary of later lexical abilities. Thus, despite the earlier divergence in their path to language development from the typical one, the path for children with WS re-converges with that for typically developing children and children with other developmental disabilities.

Highlights

Since the pioneering work of Elizabeth Bates and her colleagues (e.g., Bates et al, 1979) on the relations between early communicative gesture development and early lexical development, a growing body of research has demonstrated consistent relations between the onset of declarative gesture acquisition and the onset of expressive referential language
This is the opposite order of onset from that shown by most typically developing (TD) children and children with a variety of other developmental disabilities (DD), suggesting a divergence in the path to early language development for children with Williams syndrome (WS)
This divergence does not indicate that the establishment of triadic joint attention is not important for children with WS to begin to produce referential language but rather that other means for establishing this attention are being used

Summary

Introduction

Since the pioneering work of Elizabeth Bates and her colleagues (e.g., Bates et al, 1979) on the relations between early communicative gesture development and early lexical development, a growing body of research has demonstrated consistent relations between the onset of declarative (referential) gesture acquisition and the onset of expressive referential language. Early declarative gesturing ability has been shown to be strongly related to concurrent expressive vocabulary size and to vocabulary ability months or even a few years later. This body of research has focused primarily on typically developing (TD) children. To determine if the relations found for TD children are universal, studies of children with developmental disabilities (DD) are crucial To date, such studies have focused primarily on children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) or Down syndrome (DS). Frequency of early use of declarative gestures is a stronger predictor of later lexical development than early vocabulary size These findings suggest that early declarative gestures may play a critical facilitative role in later language development. To evaluate the universality of these findings, we tested children with Williams syndrome (WS), a genetic disorder associated with both language and communicative gesture delay

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